Anicka Yi (b.1971, Seoul, Korea) has embedded tempura-fried flowers, acrylic paint, and vinyl tubing in glycerin soap and resin; floated a cow’s stomach in hair gel inside a transparent Longchamp handbag; and created a perfume from the bacteria of 100 women. Intertwining the seemingly permanent and the perishable, Yi’s work reorders the chemical and cultural forces that privilege containment over leakage, apathy over empathy, and elevate sight above all other senses.

Published in conjunction with the exhibition “Anicka Yi: 6,070,430K of Digital Spit” at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, the book includes an exchange between Caroline A. Jones and Yi on scent, ethnicity, and symbiotic microorganisms; an essay by Johanna Burton on networks and extravisual means; and an essay by Alise Upitis on the irreducible ambiguity of Yi’s work. Anicka Yi: 6,070,430K of Digital Spit is the artist’s first monograph.
Designed by Eric Wrenn.